


Close to Home

by metisket



Category: Katekyou Hitman Reborn!
Genre: F/M, Gen, Kid Fic, but happy ones, chrome is a more complicated issue, hibari would raise happy children, just look at his pets, murder mayhem fluffy pink dresses, stone-cold psychos of course, violence is the answer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 21:27:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/602262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/metisket/pseuds/metisket
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Everyone watching the spectacle that is Hibari Kyouya raising a child in fascinated horror.</p><p>
  <i>Hibari treats child-rearing almost exactly like animal-training—the same basic pattern modified for a bipedal, very intelligent creature. It’s a little upsetting to watch. On the other hand, both his animals and his child seem happy, if odd, so maybe it works out.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Close to Home

**Author's Note:**

> First posted May 2011.
> 
> Now with:  
> [Art](http://orangebuttons.livejournal.com/967.html) by orangebuttons

“Boss?”

A familiar, hesitant voice. Chrome.

Except that that’s impossible, because it’s…four in the morning, according to Tsuna’s clock. And he’s in bed, as everyone ought to be at this hour. Chrome, of all people, can’t possibly be in his room right now, particularly since she’s supposed to be in Seoul, has been in Seoul for five months.

It’s too weird to be true, therefore it isn’t true. It’s a crazy dream, that’s all. Tsuna’s going back to sleep.

“Boss?”

A crazy, persistent dream.

“I’m. I’m sorry to bother you, Boss, but…”

Tsuna sighs, crawls across the bed to the nearest lamp, and turns it on. The sudden light stabs into his eyes, and he whimpers. Once he’s stopped squinting and cringing and can actually see, he observes that Chrome is plastered against the door with a hand on the knob like she’s thinking of bolting right back out. And she’s been crying. She _never_ cries. Tsuna scrubs his face with his hands and tries to wake the hell up. This is apparently a crisis.

“What’s wrong?” he croaks, sounding, he’s sure, the epitome of reassuring calm.

“N-nothing.” It doesn’t take hyper-intuition to know that’s a blatant lie. “It’s just…I’m, I’ll be away for a while, and. I thought I should tell you. Because you worry.”

True…and yet the conversation so far hasn’t done much to make him worry less. “Well. Thank you for telling me. Um…you were in Korea…?”

“Mukuro-sama and Fran-kun are finishing up.”

“So you left there and came back here…to tell me you’re leaving.” _At four in the morning_. Is he still half-asleep, or does that make no sense at all?

“I’ll be gone for four months,” she says. “Or. A year?”

“That’s a long time,” Tsuna says carefully, wide awake now. “Are you…can you tell me where you’ll be?”

“Oh,” she breathes, looking away. “I don’t know.”

He gives up on asking her questions, because he can see that she’s about ten seconds away from crying again, which is— _weird_ , beyond weird, since when does Chrome cry? Not since before Daemon Spade, anyway. Tsuna studies her, trying to puzzle out the problem.

The strange thing is, she doesn’t look bad, apart from the terrifying tears. Tired, yes. Maybe a little pale, though it’s hard to tell in this light. Otherwise, she seems unusually healthy. Certainly better-fed than normal; she must like Korean food. It’s hard to tell exactly how much weight she’s put on, though, because her clothes are the least form-fitting things he’s ever seen her wear—a long, flowing shirt, almost as long as some of her skirts, and a knee-length skirt under that. Like she’s trying to hide her body.

Trying to hide her body. Random crying. Five months in Korea, which is to say, five months since she was last in Japan. To be followed by four months to a year elsewhere, anywhere.

What Tsuna’s thinking is crazy. It’s impossible.

Is it crazier and more impossible, though, than Chrome showing up in his room in the wee hours of the morning crying and threatening to disappear? Maybe not.

Does she even _have_ those body parts? Tsuna’s seen her on bad days, and her middle collapses completely, nothing in there at all.

Well. But isn’t that the point? Can’t she have any organs she feels like having? So this was a deliberate choice.

God, does she think she can maintain the illusion of a womb _through labor?_ Because that doesn’t seem remotely safe.

Tsuna does a quick calculation, and it’s going to be a near thing, but Chrome probably won’t be a teen mother. He’s not sure why he finds that comforting, but he does, and since it’s the only comforting thing about this situation so far, he’s planning to cling to it.

“Please be careful,” he whispers, trying not to panic.

“I will,” she whispers back.

“Don’t be alone. That’s an order, Chrome.”

“…Okay, Boss.”

“If you need anything—it doesn’t matter what it is, doesn’t matter when—you can have it. Call me, okay? It’s fine. Anything.”

She nods and leaves the room, tears running silently down her face.

Tsuna gets out of bed. He’s not sleeping any more tonight; there’s no point kidding himself about it. He may as well get some work done.

He wonders if the father knows. Given the way Chrome is currently fleeing the country, probably not. But it’s not Tsuna’s place to tell him, if Chrome doesn’t want him to know.

Tsuna feels a little like crying, himself.

* * *

Kusakabe stopped questioning Kyouya years ago. There’s no point; it only irritates him and frustrates you. Kyouya has his reasons for everything he does, and you can love him or leave him, but you’re not going to change his mind. Besides, his reasons are generally good. The problem is that he insists on doing everything according to his own system, and his system makes very little sense from the outside.

Kusakabe stopped trying to explain Kyouya to other people around the same time he stopped questioning him. Again, there’s really no point.

In accordance with these philosophies, when Chrome Dokuro started wandering in and out of Kyouya’s rooms at odd hours, Kusakabe neither commented on it to Kyouya nor mentioned it to anyone else. After all, Chrome is a free agent. If she’s also a touch insane, well, the same can be said of Kyouya. So that’s fair. Besides, Kusakabe’s watched them attacking each other (Chrome refers to it as “practice,” Kusakabe refers to it as “fighting very nearly to the death”), and it’s obvious that Chrome can hold her own.

The Chrome visits have gone on for a couple of years now, and it has blessedly never been Kusakabe’s business or concern. Or at least, that was true until today.

Chrome wanders in. Kusakabe’s glad to see her, because it’s been almost a year. She is prone to inexplicably vanishing for long periods of time, but this was unusually long, and it’s always a relief when she reappears. Even Kyouya half-smiles at the sight of her, though the smile vanishes when he notices that she’s carrying something.

It’s a mysterious bundle wrapped in cloth. She’s cradling it with exaggerated care, like the idea of dropping it—of holding it in the first place—terrifies her. Strange for her to be carrying anything other than a weapon.

She casts Kusakabe an alarmed look, as if she’s never seen him before—which is normal—then kneels opposite Hibari and stares at him, worried and confused. Which is not normal. When she tugs the cloth back from the bundle, everything starts to make a horrible kind of sense.

It’s a baby. They say babies look like their fathers, and this one definitely looks like Kyouya. Only a lifetime of dealing with the bizarre keeps Kusakabe from gasping out loud.

Romario maintains that Kyouya is a blank slate—a creepy, sociopathic blank slate, in fact—but that’s not true. Kyouya’s very expressive, in an understated way. Easy to read once you get used to him.

This time, though, he really is blank—as if something critical just disconnected inside his head. Kusakabe doesn’t blame him.

Chrome very carefully holds the baby out to Kyouya, and after a stunned moment, he takes it. Chrome hesitates, fidgeting and searching for words for an agonizingly long time before she gives up, stands, and walks out, eyes studiously on the floor. Out of the room, out of the building, and gone, Kusakabe expects, for the next several months.

Kyouya doesn’t watch her go; he’s still staring at the baby with that total lack of expression. The baby’s slept through all of this, and why not? Not a word’s been spoken.

Ten minutes pass, the silence broken only by quiet, sleeping baby noises. Kusakabe refuses to allow himself any reaction until he knows which direction Kyouya’s going to run with this. Dwelling on the scary possibilities won’t help anything.

Kyouya shifts slightly, looking away from the baby and blinking at the room. Apparently he’d forgotten the room existed, and is annoyed to find it there.

“Tetsu,” he snaps, low and irritated. “Go buy…baby things.”

“Yes, Kyou-san,” Kusakabe breathes in relief.

He heads to the stores with a spring in his step. Kyouya’s decided he’s responsible for the baby; this is the best case scenario. Once Kyouya’s taken responsibility for something, he never lets it go. And Kusakabe likes babies.

He wonders if it’s a boy or a girl. He’ll have to buy gender-neutral things until he knows. Baby clothes are sold by age, aren’t they? Given how long Chrome was gone, the baby can’t be much older than three months. Is it healthy for a baby to be without its mother so soon?

Well, but. Chrome. What can you do?

So, formula and bottles. Clothes. Diapers. Blankets. A crib. Kyouya will definitely keep the baby in his room at first—Kyouya is going to be a terrifying, possessive monster about this, this is going to be _worse_ than the time Hibird sprained a wing—but eventually they’ll need to make up a nursery. What else do babies need? Toys? Things to chew on?

Doctor’s appointments. Finding out if the baby has a name and which country it’s a citizen of, if any. Explaining all of this to the ward office. Oh God, and babies keep weird hours, don’t they? Kyouya’s going to be really short on sleep, and everyone over the age of one is going to bleed because of it. This should be fun.

But first, shopping. Easiest and most immediately necessary. Everything else can wait.

Kusakabe has had to buy a lot of strange things for Kyouya over the years. He finds it’s best to have a sympathy-inducing story to go with his bizarre purchases, or else he gets funny looks.

This time it should be easy. He can stick very near the truth, and it may even win him help from bystanders. He thinks his story will start, “So my best friend’s girlfriend just—right now!—showed up out of the blue…”

He should probably hurry, though. Eventually the baby is going to wake up, find its mother gone, and likely have a screaming fit. Kusakabe needs to get back home before Kyouya does something rash in response.

Romario is going to laugh for hours when he hears about this.

* * *

There’s a toddler running around the house.

This isn’t so odd in itself. There have been, off and on, a lot of toddlers running around the Chiavarone estate. But there’s one key difference between those toddlers and this one, which is that Dino always knew who those children belonged to and where they came from.

This one is a little mystery. A cute little mystery, but that doesn’t really help. She’s clearly Japanese, which cuts down the possibilities a bit too much, since Dino can’t think of anyone on that side of the Vongola family who has a kid this age. Or any kids at all.

She is _ridiculously_ cute—moving with awkward care, a serious expression on her cherubic, round face, wearing a screamingly pink dress designed on the theory that fluffier is better. But seriously. Whose kid is she? And why is she trying to dismantle that antique jewelry box?

“Hello,” Dino says in Japanese, trying to distract mystery toddler from her destructive efforts. “What’s your name?” Seems wise to keep things simple.

She turns away from the box and stares at him for an uncomfortably long time before dismissively declaring, “Stranger,” and attacking the box again.

“Your name is Stranger?” Dino asks.

“Papa says don’t talk to strangers,” she corrects, eyes on the box.

“But…I can’t be that much of a stranger. You’re in my house.”

“Stranger,” she insists, voice starting to climb.

“I’m Dino Chiavarone. This is my house. There, now we’re not strangers, right?”

“Stranger, stranger, stranger!”

Suddenly there’s a fist pressed to his back, a tonfa across his throat, and a pleasantly familiar but completely insane voice hissing into his ear, “You’re annoying my daughter.”

Dino thinks he can actually hear the sound of his mind snapping clean in half.

“Papa!” the little girl cries in a complete reversal of attitude, seizing the box and bouncing a few steps in their direction, beaming. “I found a box like yours!”

“It’s not like mine,” Kyouya corrects blandly. “But take it to Tetsu. I’ll follow you once I’ve bitten this one to death.”

“Okay!”

“Kyouya, that box is pretty expens—” the rest of the words come out as a pitiful croaking noise thanks to an increase in tonfa pressure, and Dino can only watch sadly as the box is stolen away by tiny hands. Tiny hands that keep dropping it every few yards. _Goodbye, dear family heirloom. I’m sorry I failed you_.

Dino reflects, as Kyouya releases him only to launch into a head-on attack, that Romario must have known about this…child situation. He and Kusakabe are brain twins, after all; what one of them knows, the other will know within twenty-four hours. Which means Romario deliberately chose not to tell Dino, probably in the hope that he’d get to see Dino’s face when he found out.

At first blood—his, of course—it occurs to him that Tsuna also must know, because Tsuna keeps obsessively close track of his family. Besides, Gokudera tells him everything, and Gokudera is a confirmed stalker. Who knew Tsuna was malicious enough to spring something like this on Dino with no warning? Little traitor.

By the time Kyouya’s bleeding, Dino has confronted the fact that there has to be, God help them all, a woman somewhere in this equation. A crazy woman, one must assume. A dangerous woman, or Kyouya wouldn’t have bothered. Dino reflects on the crazy, dangerous women Kyouya knows. The little girl doesn’t look like any of them. Actually, she looks a bit like a tiny, female Kyouya, if Dino considers it with that horrifying possibility in mind.

“So that’s your daughter.”

Kyouya responds by trying to steal Dino’s whip and break his arm.

“She’s awfully cute, Kyouya.”

“Shut up.”

“You must’ve been a cute kid, too!”

“You’re a dead man, Chiavarone.”

“Does she have a name?”

“Yes.”

“…Does she have a mother?”

“If you have to ask, it’s no wonder _you_ have no children.”

“Kyouya! That was below the belt!”

“Whatever works.”

Kyouya…appears to be messing with him. This is a new and troubling development. Could it be that fatherhood has mellowed him? “Do I know her mother?”

“I don’t keep track of your social life.”

“No, seriously, Kyouya, who is she?”

“It has nothing to do with you.”

This reluctance is really strange. Who’s he trying to protect? “Who should I contact if you and Kusakabe get yourselves killed?”

“We won’t.”

“If you did.”

“Sawada Tsunayoshi.”

“So Tsuna’s the mother?”

Dino quickly finds himself flat on his back staring up at the sole of a shoe as it makes a fairly sincere effort to crush his nose into the rest of his face.

“We’ll be here until Friday,” Kyouya says calmly. “If you annoy my daughter again, I’ll feed her your heart.”

What, no _bite you to death_? Well, switching things up, that’s nice. And Dino vaguely remembers that you’re supposed to eat the hearts of brave enemies to absorb their courage and strength. This may be the creepiest compliment he’s ever received.

Kyouya removes his shoe from Dino’s face and stalks off. Dino rubs gently at his nose and feels comprehensively sorry for himself, scary compliments notwithstanding. Kyouya, no longer satisfied with physical abuse, is now mocking him, too. Romario’s withholding information. Tsuna is laughing at him from across the ocean. Kyouya’s adorable little girl wears pink, fluffy dresses.

This is all starting to feel like a cosmic joke at Dino’s expense.

* * *

Hibari named their daughter, but Chrome was the one who explained the name to Tsuna, when the girl was still a baby and Chrome was still afraid to touch her.

Asami, spelled with the kanji for morning and sea, because she was born in the morning and over the sea. _And Hibari will never forget it_ , Chrome said, smiling a strange smile.

Tsuna listened very carefully and understood very little. It was frustrating; Chrome’s explanation barely skirted the edge of what Tsuna wanted to know. What had she called the baby before leaving her with Hibari? Why was she so afraid of her own daughter? Where exactly had Asami been born, and who’d been there? Just Mukuro, or Ken and Chikusa, too? Had they bothered with a hospital?

The idea of an exhausted Chrome, an unsupervised Mukuro, and another man’s child alone together…Tsuna isn’t sure exactly what he’s afraid of, but he is afraid. He watches Asami, a quiet and composed five, and tries to convince himself that he would have noticed by now if Mukuro had done something to her.

And besides, Mukuro, however drastic his faults, has always loved Chrome. He wouldn’t hurt her daughter, especially not a daughter she’d fought so hard to have. Tsuna knows that; he can’t tell whether his lingering worry is intuition or paranoia.

Asami places a stone on the go board and stares at Tsuna, feral and eager. She seems quiet and composed until you really _look_ at her. Tsuna smiles and turns to study the board. He has no idea what’s going on, but he suspects he may be losing. To a five-year-old.

It’s lucky his pride came pre-crushed. He places a piece at random and despairs—not just of go, more’s the pity. Of his opponent, too.

Hibari has spent most of the last five years in Namimori or near it, leaving Japan only for relatively tame scouting missions that he could bring Asami along for. And that’s been fine so far, but eventually…eventually Tsuna’s going to need his Cloud back.

He’s babysitting a child while thinking of stealing her father away. There’s got to be a special hell for that.

“Tsuna?” asks the child in question. “Are you gonna resign or what?”

“Oh.” As is not infrequently the case at this point in a go game, the board has blurred, to Tsuna’s eye, into a random array of black and white spots. “Am I losing?”

“You lost ages ago, Tsuna. _Aaages_ ago.”

“Oh.” Now that she mentions it, her pieces are pretty noticeably dominating the board. “I resign.”

Asami whoops, leaping up to do a victory dance around the room. Tsuna has no idea who she inherited this tendency to gloat from, but he likes to think it’s Hibari’s side of the family.

The door handle turns, and before the door has a chance to swing open, Asami is back in silent, contemplative seiza across from Tsuna, looking like she’d never dream of dancing around the room. Tsuna salutes her acting abilities, but he also smiles over how very slowly that door opened.

Hibari walks in, and Asami grins at him. “Papa!”

Hibari’s mouth quirks almost imperceptibly in response, and he comes over to stand beside Asami and study the board. “Wow,” he drawls, dry and unimpressed. “Who played black?”

“I did,” Tsuna sighs. Hibari gives him a look. “Yes, I know. I got trounced by your five-year-old.”

Hibari’s expression suggests a hurtful lack of surprise. Still, Tsuna catches his sidelong, proud glance at Asami.

Asami catches it, too. She ducks her head, grinning.

“Why does she even know _how_ to play go?” Tsuna asks, amused. “It’s not a preschooler’s game, Hibari-san.”

“It disciplines the mind,” he informs Tsuna. “I’m not interested in how herbivores train their children.”

Hibari treats child-rearing almost exactly like animal-training—the same basic pattern modified for a bipedal, very intelligent creature. It’s a little upsetting to watch. On the other hand, both his animals and his child seem happy, if odd, so maybe it works out.

“It’s time,” Hibari tells Asami, who leaps to her feet, giving Hibari a questioning look. He nods. Thus permitted, she flies into Tsuna’s arms, catching him in her usual strangle-hold hug.

“Next time, Tsuna, you pick the game,” she says, bouncing back. “But I’ll beat you anyways!”

“Anyway,” Hibari corrects.

“I’ll beat you anyway!”

“I look forward to it,” Tsuna says seriously.

“Asami,” Hibari barks, marching toward the door, apparently bored with the conversation. Asami scurries after him. Hibari never looks back, but he has cut his usual walking speed in half.

Tsuna leans back on his hands and studies his crushing defeat on the go board. _Another few years_ , he thinks. _Hibari-san can stay in Japan for another few years_.

* * *

Takeshi’s not sure how things turned out this way. He’s not sure he’s happy about it, either.

Tsuna’s in Italy this week. For reasons known only to Tsuna, he took Hibari and Kusakabe with him, but not Gokudera or Takeshi. This drove Gokudera into hysterics, and Takeshi had to calm him down. But that’s fine; he signed up for Gokudera duty.

He doesn’t feel like he signed up for Hibari duty.

“Take care of my daughter,” Hibari said, randomly appearing at Takeshi’s door holding giant overnight bags and trailing a scowling little girl in a blinding purple dress. “Or I’ll bite you to death.”

Takeshi had never so much as talked to Hibari’s kid before—Hibari’d always kept her hidden away. Takeshi knows nothing about kids. On the other hand…well, he didn’t sign up for babysitting, but he does know how to pick his battles.

So it ends up like this: Tsuna’s spending the week in Italy with Hibari, Gokudera’s panicking all day every day, and Takeshi and his dad are teaching Hibari’s kid how to make sushi because Takeshi has no idea what to do with her. Definitely a recipe for some kind of disaster.

“Okay, Asami-chan. First we have to pick what kind of sushi we’re making. What do you like?”

She looks up at Takeshi with Chrome’s big eyes and Hibari’s unnervingly direct stare and asks, “What’s the best?”

“There isn’t really a best kind of sushi,” he tells her, kneeling down so they’re level.

“There’s a best everything,” she assures him with scary conviction. “Papa says you should never accept anything but the best.”

Takeshi’s learned more about the life philosophy of Asami’s papa in the last hour than he had over the previous fifteen years. “Haha, right. So if people try to give you second-class stuff, are you supposed to bite them to death?”

“No. Papa says girls shouldn’t bite people to death,” she informs him primly. “Girls should gouge people’s eyes out, because it’s acceptable for us to wear our nails longer. So that’s more practical.” She gives Takeshi a pitying look. “You don’t know anything, do you?”

He senses that this is going to be a long week.

“My favorite,” Dad announces, “is inari sushi.” Takeshi raises an eyebrow, because that’s not true, and he’s not sure what Dad’s up to. “And if it’s my favorite, then it must be the best.”

Asami is openly dubious.

“I make sushi for a living. I’m an expert.”

Asami turns this over, then nods grudging acceptance. “We can make inari sushi,” she allows.

Little kids, Takeshi remembers, usually like inari sushi best, because it’s sweet, maybe. He smiles at his dad; Dad winks back.

Inari sushi turns out to be a success, and it kills a couple of hours, too. Eventually, though, Dad kicks them out, and Takeshi has to take Asami home. No Dad to protect him. Just Takeshi and a little brainwashed-by-Hibari eight-year-old, walking home alone together. Yikes.

Really, it’s weird how Hibari-influenced Asami is. Yeah, Chrome isn’t what you’d call an overwhelming personality, but she’s still Asami’s mom. She must’ve had _some_ kind of impact. Takeshi sure can’t see it, though.

Weird.

“You see much of your mom, kiddo?”

“No,” Asami answers, apparently more interested in the cracks in the sidewalk than the question. “She’s a very busy person. And don’t call me that.”

“Hm.” So Chrome’s busy, but Hibari…isn’t? “You ever jealous of other kids? I mean, the ones who get to see their moms all the time.” God knows Takeshi had spent his whole childhood jealous.

“No,” Asami declares with a superior sniff. “Papa says herbivores come with all the parts to make babies already, so they can have babies by accident. _My_ mama made a place for me, special. She wanted me more than theirs wanted them. Papa says she doesn’t like to hold still, is all.”

Takeshi thinks of the way Chrome is, the way she walks into a room already looking for a way out, the way she’s never really all there. Maybe she doesn’t like to hold still. Or maybe she can’t stand to. “I think your papa’s right.”

“Papa is _always_ right.”

Haha, of course.

They make it back to the apartment uneventfully. Takeshi puts away the leftover sushi and tries to remember what he liked to do as a kid. Apart from eating food and playing baseball, he’s coming up depressingly blank, and he already tried the food thing.

Asami is staring at him with a _dance, monkey, dance_ expression.

Takeshi’s about to suggest baseball out of sheer desperation when Gokudera pounds on the door. Best timing ever. “Gokudera,” Takeshi tells Asami, figuring she might attack if he doesn’t warn her in advance.

She scowls at him. “How do you know that?”

Because Gokudera’s lonely when Tsuna’s gone; he comes by every day. “Well…he’s got a distinctive knock?”

Asami is skeptical. Takeshi opens the door to prove his point, and, indeed, there’s Gokudera. Asami’s eyebrows go up. Hey, for the first time ever, Takeshi’s impressed her. Win.

“Where the fuck are you looking, baseball freak?” Gokudera hasn’t noticed Asami yet because he’s too busy glaring death at Takeshi.

Takeshi smiles in response. He can’t help it. “Gokudera!”

“Yamamoto. Since you’re too lazy to haul your ass the three blocks to base, I have to come to you, is that it? Work is piling up on your desk like a trash heap, and whenever you’re gone, five people a day come to _me_ to ask where you are like I’m your goddamn moth—holy _shit_ is that a kid?”

“Asami-chan, come see your Uncle Hayato!” Takeshi calls out with slightly manic cheer.

“Gokudera Hayato,” Asami murmurs, peering around Takeshi, not _quite_ clinging to him.

“That’s Hibari’s kid.” Gokudera backs uneasily out onto the walkway. “What are _you_ doing with _Hibari’s_ kid?”

“…Babysitting?”

Gokudera makes Takeshi’s favorite shocked-and-appalled face. “Why _you?_ ”

“I think because Tsuna’s busy.”

“It’s my naptime,” Asami cuts in. “ _Past_ my naptime. Where am I supposed to sleep?”

“You’ve got a _naptime?_ ” Gokudera is incredulous. “You’re way too old for that.”

Asami glares. Gokudera glares. The two of them aren’t hitting it off the way Takeshi had hoped. “Papa naps,” Asami decrees, as if that’s a definitive argument. And it is, in her world. _Papa is always right_.

“Haha, yeah. I guess he does,” Takeshi cuts in before this gets out of hand. No point arguing with Hibari through his brainwashed kid. “Okay. You can sleep over here…”

Takeshi gets Asami tucked in for naptime, and she only glares a little. He doesn’t have to worry that he’s not meeting his daily glaring quota, though, because now he gets to talk to Gokudera.

Gokudera rants about Yamamoto’s work backlog for a while, but once he’s decided Asami’s asleep, he starts in on her family life, instead. Sometime during the last few years, he totally lost track of the concept of _not my business_. “Have you ever seen Chrome and Hibari together?” he asks.

“Um…?”

“I mean, have you ever even seen them in the same _room_ for long? Because I haven’t. And…not that I’m an expert on domestic bliss or anything, but that seems really fucking weird.”

“Yeah, but, you know. Those two.” It would be much weirder if their relationship seemed normal. “Asami says she doesn’t see a lot of Chrome.”

“So Hibari’s the reliable one.”

“Pretty crazy, huh?”

Gokudera jams his hands in his pockets and scowls. “Am I supposed to feel bad for her?”

“Nah, she seems fine. Kinda bossy.”

“Yeah, I noticed. Two minutes, and already I want to smack her.”

“But if you smack her, she’ll gouge your eyes out.”

Gokudera rubs his forehead. “Seriously, who let Hibari breed?”

“Chrome.”

“It was a rhetorical question, asshole.” Takeshi holds his peace, and Gokudera fidgets and works himself around to feeling guilty for having said that. Given enough time and silence, Gokudera can be counted on to make himself feel guilty about anything. “So—so what, you’ve got the kid until Tenth gets back? That sucks. And it sucks for me, too, because _I’m_ the one who has to make sure your desk doesn’t collapse under paperwork. Fucking Hibari.”

Takeshi laughs; Gokudera’s apologies are something else. “I don’t know. It might work out.”

“May God,” Gokudera says, “have mercy on your soul.”

But Takeshi’s right—things do get better after the first day. Asami eases up a lot once you know and respect her rules (Hibari’s rules). Actually, most of her problem is that she’s crazy homesick, and once Takeshi figures that out, everything makes a lot more sense. The rules are comfortable for her, familiar, and Takeshi can put up with them if they keep Asami from crying.

Still, he really wouldn’t want to deal with Hibari rules for more than a week. For one thing, the schedule might’ve been specifically designed to crush the fun out of life.

One must be awake and sparring by six, or the day is wasted, apparently. (Takeshi’s never fought a little kid before. She’s a rabid little kid, but he still has to be really careful. The idea of Hibari being that careful is…bizarre.) Breakfast is at eight. One is then free to do what one likes until lunch, as long as it involves being totally silent (death glare from a tiny kid, _Do you have to be so loud?_ ). Then lunch, then a long walk (or you could call it a patrol of Namimori), then a nap. Studying go until dinner, after which silence, and then bed. Asami reads a lot. Hibari probably works during quiet time. Takeshi cooks, or else sits around feeling like he’s going slowly insane. He should have Gokudera bring him some of that paperwork.

By midweek, Takeshi’s achieved the great victory of substituting baseball for go. Once he’s managed that, it’s not a bad lifestyle. Well, it’s survivable, anyway. It’s worth it.

Once the rules are in place and everything’s on track, Asami turns almost cheerful. Though she is still given to sharing the Gospel According to Hibari at every opportunity. The correct and only way to fold towels, water plants, brew tea, so on and so forth.

Hibari lives this way on purpose. Asami’s brainwashed, so she has an excuse, but Hibari does this to himself. Takeshi doesn’t get it.

Eventually, and though there were times when it seemed it would never happen, the week does come to an end. Takeshi escorts Asami and all of her luggage to the base. They had a fun week, more or less, but Takeshi now knows for sure that he never wants kids of his own. So in that sense, the week was productive.

Tsuna laughs when they drag Asami’s crap into his office, but Hibari doesn’t see the humor in it. He looks…well, if he were anyone else, he’d be coming off as uncertain. Takeshi gives him an encouraging smile.

Hibari’s worrying, Takeshi’s trying to cheer him up. This is the Twilight Zone.

Asami takes this moment to drop her bags and look around, and she lights up at the sight of Hibari. “Papa!” She bounds over to him, barely holding back from doing something embarrassing and crazy, like, horror of horrors, hugging her dad in front of people.

Hibari’s unsure look disappears, and he reaches out to briefly touch Asami’s hair, smiling one of his stealth smiles. “I see,” he says, “that Yamamoto Takeshi still has his eyes.”

Asami shrugs, but she can’t seem to stop herself from grinning.

“Sorry I stole him away from you, Asami-chan,” Tsuna says, watching the two of them, peaceful and pleased. “I’ll try not to do it too often, okay?”

Asami looks up at Hibari. He nods, and Asami goes barreling over to Tsuna, who kneels down to meet her. She crashes right into him, hugging him around the neck until he looks likely to choke, not that he seems to mind. It must be acceptable to hug Tsuna in public. Makes sense, really. Hugging Tsuna _can’t_ be a bad thing; that’s got to be a natural law.

Tsuna leans back, hands on Asami’s shoulders, and asks about her week. She launches into an explanation of the finer points of sushi-making and baseball, periodically checking on her father to see if he’s listening. He is. Hibari always pays attention to things that interest him.

Tsuna’s amazing with Asami, which is no surprise. He was amazing with kids when he was a kid. But here he is, almost thirty, and not only does he not have kids of his own, he doesn’t even have kids vaguely in sight on the horizon. And Takeshi’s in the same boat. In fact, Hibari and Chrome are still the only guardians with a kid, and it wasn’t Hibari’s idea. This means Chrome is the bravest of them all, or maybe the one with the most faith.

That doesn’t bode well for the rest of them.

* * *

Tsuna’s trying to work, really he is. Unfortunately, he’s always been easily distracted, and Asami, like her father, unlike her mother, is an especially distracting distraction. It’s not her fault—she’s curled up beside Chrome on the couch, perfectly quiet. Neither of them needs anything from Tsuna, and yet he can’t help checking on them every thirty seconds.

Asami is balancing a sketchbook on her knees and whispering to Chrome. Chrome is conjuring up illusions in response to the whispers—flowers, birds, weapons—for Asami to sketch. They’re laughing together, quiet and low and private. Tsuna’s never seen Chrome happier. It’s a shame she can’t stand to be happy for long.

Hibari and Asami are different when they’re together. They don’t talk much, but Asami always watches him, looks to him for approval, guidance, reassurance. Things most people would never think to look to Hibari for. And Hibari’s always watched her, too—with demented protectiveness when she was young, but more and more with quiet pride. They’re a self-sufficient, closed circuit of two, happy in themselves and each other, deadly to almost everyone else. It shouldn’t be anywhere near as cute as it is.

Chrome fits into this circuit the same way she fits into anything—hesitantly, peripherally, never giving herself a chance to settle in, but never giving anyone a reason to get rid of her. She spends as much time with Mukuro as she does with Asami, and she spends as much time missing as she does with either of them, but because Hibari and Asami don’t need anything, they don’t resent Chrome for being gone so often. On the other hand, they always seem pleased when she’s there.

Again, it shouldn’t work, but it seems to.

Yamamoto walks in, interrupting these thoughts. He follows Tsuna’s line of sight to the day’s distraction, and laughs. “Hey, Chrome. Hey, Asami, you doing homework in Tsuna’s office now?”

“Just art. He has the best light,” she answers absently, sparing Yamamoto a second’s acknowledging glance before returning her attention to her mother and her sketchbook.

Tsuna’s reasonably sure that’s a lie. From what he can remember of art class, outdoor light was meant to be best. Not that he plans to argue with her—it never works. He sighs, fighting a smile. “She’s not just doing homework,” he tells Yamamoto. “She’s cheating on it. She’s supposed to be drawing things that don’t exist.”

In response to this, Chrome conjures up a free-floating eyeball with a spade for a pupil.

Yamamoto says, “There. That doesn’t exist anymore. I don’t see a problem.”

Tsuna laughs helplessly, proving that he’s as sick as the rest of them. “I think she’s meant to be drawing _without a model_. I’m pretty sure that’s the point.”

“If that was what my teacher wanted,” Asami declares, “then that’s what she should have said.”

Tsuna wishes Yamamoto wouldn’t encourage her by laughing like that.

* * *

Chikusa is eating ice cream with a twelve-year-old girl. It feels like a punishment. In fact, he finds it helpful to think of it as a punishment, because that lowers his expectations to an appropriate level.

By rights, Ken should be doing this—he, at least, likes sweet things. It’s oddly typical that Chrome dumped the job on Chikusa instead. Sometimes it seems he’s spent half his life cleaning up after Rokudo Mukuro’s tantrums and Chrome Dokuro’s mistakes. Though he’s never been able to decide whether Asami is Chrome’s most spectacular mistake, or the best idea she ever had.

“Uncle Chikusa, how _do_ you kill someone with a yo-yo?”

Just at the moment, he’s inclining more to the _spectacular mistake_ opinion.

“It’s not a weapon you can use,” he explains. “You’re the wrong flame. Doesn’t your father have someone training you?”

The child of cloud and mist, Asami has somehow managed to grow up a sun type. Chikusa puts that down to sheer willful perversity.

“Aunt Adelheid is teaching me to kill people with knives, no flames,” Asami informs him. “Reborn sits and shoots at me sometimes; he says he’s too old to chase me around. Uncle Ryouhei is teaching me to make my body into a rifle. He’s not very smart, is he? Uncle Ryouhei, I mean.”

“It doesn’t matter; he’s a great fighter. Listen to him when he tells you how to fight. Ignore him if he tries to help you with homework.”

“Papa says that’s what Uncle Hayato and Aunt Haru are for, anyway.”

Every once in a while, Chikusa can almost see what Chrome sees in Hibari Kyouya. “I suppose he’d know.”

“He has jobs for everybody,” Asami goes on thoughtfully. “All the aunts and uncles. But not you and Uncle Ken.”

“We were there when you were born,” Chikusa points out. “Maybe we’ve fulfilled our duty.” _In your deranged father’s eyes_.

Asami stares at him. “I didn’t know you were there when I was born.”

“Mm.” So Chrome doesn’t talk about that. Well, why would she?

“What was it like?” Wide eyes and avid curiosity.

What was it like.

Just past the witching hour in a ratty hotel room in Italy, absurdly far north. Lega Nord territory for the irony in it, too cold for the season, room not particularly clean. Chrome moaning like the damned, too worn out to scream, blood painting the sheets, the floor, the walls, the _ceiling_ , and Chikusa still doesn’t know how they managed that; like a murder scene, like the lab when Mukuro was done with it. Ken holding a baby, the baby _screaming_ , screaming Chrome’s share of screams and then some. Ken shouting at Chikusa, “What the hell is this cord thing, this is gross, should I bite it off? What the _fuck?_ ” Mukuro leaning over Chrome, murmuring, “No, you need your kidneys, keep hold of those. Shh. Dear Chrome, you need your stomach, too. Did you think I wouldn’t notice it missing? Don’t fight me, little one.”

And Fran, who showed up out of nowhere, presumably at Mukuro’s invitation. Fran, wandering in and out with boiling water and towels and sterilized scalpels, talking non-stop in a bland, uninflected voice. “Wow, that’s not normal. There’s an awful lot of blood, isn’t there? I’m surprised she’s not dead already. I can see you’ve never held a baby before, Mr. Ken, because you’re doing everything wrong. Mr. Chikusa, if you’re just going to stare like an imbecile, please move to the corner to do it.”

After the worst was over, after the screaming had stopped and everyone seemed likely to live through the night, Mukuro handed Chrome her baby. She took it in her arms so, so carefully, and stared into its face like her heart was breaking.

Then she turned suddenly and pushed the baby back toward Mukuro, panic-stricken, whispering, “I can’t, I can’t do this, I can’t— _take it away_.”

In the end, Chrome, who routinely stares death, torture, and madness in the eye with nothing more than a deep breath and a set mouth, ran screaming from the reality of motherhood.

Chikusa doesn’t think the baby wants to know any of that. “It was a nightmare,” he says. “But we all lived through it.” That’s how life goes, generally. Up until the nightmare you don’t live through.

“…Oh. Were you and Uncle Ken the only ones there?”

“And Fran,” Chikusa corrects. “And Mukuro-san, of course.”

Asami’s eyes glaze over a bit. “After this,” she says, “can we go to the park? You can show me how to kill people with a yo-yo. Maybe I can’t learn it, but I want to _see_.”

Ah. This again.

Asami’s very odd on the subject of Mukuro, and no wonder. Her father hates the man, but her mother adores him; these facts are known, accepted, never discussed. Any opinion she has will make one of her parents unhappy.

Her solution is to pretend that Mukuro doesn’t exist. Mukuro finds this hilarious, and when Mukuro finds something hilarious, it never ends well.

There is another, more disturbing possibility, of course. Maybe she really _doesn’t_ know Mukuro exists. He might have liked the idea of being invisible to Hibari Kyouya’s daughter. He might have cheated to make it so.

The girl probably deserves some leeway. It’s not her fault she came to Mukuro’s negative attention the instant she was born.

“All right,” Chikusa agrees. “The park.”

* * *

Takeshi opens his door on a Wednesday evening and is immediately dizzyingly grateful that Hayato isn’t around, because there’s a hysterical, bloody, fourteen-year-old girl on the doorstep, and Takeshi knows for a fact that Hayato couldn’t handle that.

He grabs Asami by the hand and pulls her inside before the neighbors see. His neighbors still think he’s a nice man, despite various family members’ best efforts, but even he couldn’t explain away a bloody little girl.

“Papa,” she gasps, “is going to be _so mad_.”

She’s shaking, but it’s probably just adrenaline. As far as Takeshi can see, none of the blood is hers. The wild eyes—well. He remembers what a first kill feels like. The eyes make sense.

 _Baby’s first murder_.

“Why do you think he’ll be mad?” he asks calmly, leading her to the kitchen and sitting her down on a wooden chair that already has bloodstains, courtesy Hayato. Takeshi has a designated chair for bloody people. Life is weird.

“I _ruined_ my dress,” Asami says, upset in wild disproportion to the problem. To what she’s telling herself is the problem. “Papa bought me this dress!”

Takeshi studies the dress in question. Before it became a blood-soaked disaster, it was a summer dress, white with blue straps and a blue sash. Modest but cute. Takeshi tries to picture Hibari walking into a store and buying it, and he just can’t.

“I love this dress,” Asami continues sadly, looking down at it—a white dress soaked in blood. There’s no hope for it at all. Asami jerks her head up and stares belligerently at the overhead light, which is what she always does when she’s about to cry. She hates and resents tears, and if you don’t watch her, she will stare at the sun in an attempt to burn them away.

“Ah,” Takeshi says, pretty much at a loss. What do you tell the beloved daughter of a borderline sociopath under these circumstances? Where’s Squalo when you need him? “Your dad’ll be happy you fought well. Maybe he won’t care about the dress.”

“ _No_ ,” she wails, losing the fight against tears and enraged about it. “I didn’t, I _didn’t_ fight well! Look at me, I made a mess—God, you’re so stupid, you don’t know _anything!_ ”

“Wait a second—you mean you’re supposed to be _neat?_ ” Come to think of it, Hibari usually walks away from nasty fights looking like he’s leaving a tea party. And always with that smile, too. “Okay. Okay, but when he was your age, your dad made huge messes. _Huge_. Blood, dirt, torn clothes, the whole deal. You have to work up to being neat, right? He won’t be mad.”

Asami shoves tears away from her eyes and glares suspiciously.

“Come on. Your dad’s always fair.” Or he’s consistent, at any rate.

“Papa’s always fair,” Asami agrees reluctantly.

Takeshi hesitates, because he’s about to make this very weird conversation even weirder. But it has to be done. “Do I need to be…calling someone? About, I don’t know, a body?”

She looks embarrassed. “Don’t tell Tsuna.”

“…Why not?”

“He’ll get all upset.”

Takeshi can’t argue with that. “And you don’t want to bother your dad because you think he’ll be mad about the mess?” She nods woefully. “Your mom in town?” She shakes her head. “Right…how about we have Kusakabe take care of the body, and Sasagawa clean you up?”

“You mean Aunt Kyoko?”

“Yeah.” No contest. Kyoko will be less bothered by this than anyone else Takeshi can think of, whereas Ryouhei would freak out and possibly destroy a building.

Asami nods, calmer now that there’s a plan. “Tell Tetsu not to tell Papa.” Tell everyone not to tell anyone, huh? Great.

Takeshi calls Kusakabe and explains the situation, and Kusakabe shouts hysterical questions into his ear. He’s never heard Kusakabe shout before. Another new experience.

Next he calls Kyoko, who doesn’t shout. She just says, “I see. She’ll need a new dress, then. What did the old one look like?” Takeshi smiles. This attitude is the reason Kyoko gets stuck with cleanup duty so often.

“So,” Takeshi says once his calls are done, settling into the chair across the table from Asami. He’s already tired, and the drama’s not even half over. “What led up to this?”

“This?” she asks blankly.

“Oh, you know. Bloodstains. Dead bodies. All that.”

Her eyes slide away from his and she smiles, and sometimes you can really _see_ what a hand Tsuna had in raising her. “I was annoyed,” she says. They’re very Hibari words, but the delivery is an exact imitation of Tsuna’s dismissive style when he’s lying because he doesn’t want to worry you. This must drive her father _insane_.

Frankly, it’s not making Takeshi very happy, either. What could Asami possibly think would worry him more than the idea that she plans to kill everyone who annoys her?

“Man or woman?” Takeshi asks as lightly as he can manage.

“A man.” Asami grins maniacally. Hibari particularly enjoys it when she beats the crap out of men.

“Mm. How did you do it?”

She hitches her skirt up high enough that Takeshi looks away in alarm, not sure where this is going—but she’s just pulling a short knife from the thigh sheath she apparently wears. Who knew?

“I gouged his eyes out,” she says thoughtfully. “Then I cut his throat, too. That’s what made the mess. I made sure to clean my knife, though.”

Her voice is wavering up and down, up and down.

“Ah.” Takeshi turns to study the pattern of evening light coming through the curtains; this is no time for eye contact. “It’s a cold feeling, isn’t it?”

“Blood is hot,” she corrects shakily, setting her knife carefully on the table.

“Yes…but still. Cold.”

“Cold,” she agrees, hunched in on herself, arms wrapped around her middle, over the bloodstains. “He _deserved_ it.”

“Of course he did. You wouldn’t have done it otherwise. But knowing that doesn’t help as much as it seems like it should.”

“Feel sick.”

“Need to throw up?”

“ _No_.”

“Put your head between your knees, lower than your heart if you can.”

She doubles over, head resting against her skirt, gasping for more air than she really needs. Takeshi studies the light against the curtains, and he waits. This, you have to work out on your own. He wishes Asami hadn’t felt the need to work it out at fourteen.

She always was precocious. Too much like the rest of them.

Eventually she sits up again and braces both hands against the table, concentrating hard on just breathing. “Anyway,” she says, steadier than before. “I’m fine.”

“I can see that,” Takeshi tells her, and laughs when she marches around the table to kick him.

Kyoko, with her usual good timing, chooses this moment to arrive. She says her hellos, then inspects the apartment—bloody girl, bloody chair, knife on the kitchen table—ending with a steady gaze in Takeshi’s direction. He hustles to get out of her way.

“I’ll go for a walk,” he says brightly, edging toward the door. “I’ll be back in…?”

Kyoko contemplates the state of Asami, and says, “An hour.”

“I’ll be back in an hour!”

He realizes he’s fleeing his own home, but that’s the least of his troubles. In fact, he’d _like_ an hour to process all the chaos, but of course it doesn’t work out that way. Hayato has a sixth sense for the rare times when Takeshi is planning to brood. Takeshi gets a call about ten minutes after leaving his apartment.

“Yamamoto,” Hayato grates out, steady and slow. “What the _hell_ is going on?”

Takeshi winces. That is one angry right hand man. “Haha…did you go to my place?”

“Your bloodstained place? Yeah. Yeah, I did. You weren’t there, but Sasagawa was, and if I understood her correctly, she just told me to fuck off and mind my own business. What the _fuck_.”

“Well, I can’t go back for an hour. Want to meet up at yours?”

“What do you mean you can’t—no. In thirty seconds or less, what’s going on?”

“Thirty seconds, haha, that’s harsh. Okay. Asami ruined her dress killing someone. She was worried Hibari’d get mad about the dress, so she came to me. I called Kusakabe to get rid of the body, and Sasagawa to clean up Asami.” Not even twenty seconds. Takeshi’s good.

Hayato’s making a scary hissing noise now, like he’d be screaming if he weren’t biting his tongue. He should really learn not to ask for things he doesn’t want.

They end up meeting at the Namimori middle school baseball diamond, where they sit in the bleachers and talk about work and murder for a while. Just making the day that little bit more surreal.

“I don’t know what the fuck I expected from Hibari’s kid,” Hayato announces, glaring at third base like it spit on his shoe.

“I expected her to make it to sixteen, at least,” Takeshi admits. “That was my first kill. Sixteen.”

“Yeah, but you—you were _protecting the Tenth_ , you didn’t kill a random guy in an alley. That’s fucked up.”

 _I was protecting you, too_ , Takeshi thinks, but he knows better than to say so. “What about you?”

Hayato remains fixated on third base. “I was ten,” he mutters eventually. “And it was a random guy in an alley.”

 _Oh_.

“Been an hour yet?”

“…Yeah,” Takeshi answers, voice a little rough. He clears his throat. “Yeah, it’s been an hour.” He casts about for something to get that look off of Hayato’s face. “Should we bring back food?”

Hayato rolls his eyes in exasperation: Takeshi wins. “What, like, ‘Congratulations on killing someone, have a pie’? No.”

“I think,” Yamamoto says, “they’ll be hungry.”

“Nothing like scrubbing blood off things to work up an appetite.”

“Exactly.”

“Baseball freak. No.”

“Just something small—”

“No.”

“Or I could cook—”

“Shut up or I swear to God I will blow you up, and then we’ll have another body to get rid of.”

The walk back to the apartment seems to take no time at all.

“Perfect timing,” Kyoko says when they arrive.

“You sure I’m allowed to come in now?” Gokudera demands resentfully. Takeshi laughs.

Kyoko ignores them. She produces Asami’s old dress and hands it to Takeshi, gesturing to the skirt. He looks at it and his mood instantly takes a dive.

Now that he’s really paying attention, he notices there’s a long, jagged tear in the hem. As if someone tried to rip the skirt off, or out of the way. Kyoko notices him noticing, nods, and vanishes back into the bathroom.

So Takeshi won’t have to keep pushing Asami to tell him why she killed that man. It’s pretty clear. He passes the dress to Hayato, who notices the tear in an instant. Hayato notices everything.

“Too bad,” he mutters, wandering to the kitchen and rummaging through cabinets. “If this is all the blood she got on her, the son of a bitch didn’t suffer enough.”

“Well,” Takeshi says quietly, “she was trying to be neat.”

Hayato finds Takeshi’s trash bags, wads the dress up, and stuffs it into one. “I’ll burn this back at the base. I guess we know why she didn’t want Hibari to see it.”

Hibari would kill everyone in Namimori for allowing this to happen, that’s why.

But wow. Asami must have been a real shock for the would-be rapist, molester, whatever. She looks like an easy mark, or at least, she does if you’re not paying attention. Small, cute girl who won’t be able to fight back, he must’ve thought.

Instead he got Asami, who is definitely her father’s daughter.

“The hell are you grinning about, baseball freak?”

Takeshi tries to get the grin under control with limited success. “I was just thinking…it must have been a night of surprises. For that guy.”

After a moment of thought, Hayato starts grinning, too. “Yeah. But lucky him, he didn’t have to worry about it long.”

Asami and Kyoko emerge from the bathroom, Asami in a new but similar dress, looking calm and fragile. It’s such an amazing lie. Takeshi and Hayato beam at her, and she scowls back at them. “Uncle Hayato,” she says. “Why are you even here?”

“It’s my job,” Hayato snaps, smile vanishing. “Thanks for making me find out about this through the grapevine, by the way.”

“Whatever. Telling Uncle Takeshi is the same as telling you.”

“What’s _that_ supposed to mean?”

Asami makes a kissy face, and Takeshi seizes Hayato’s arms and twists them behind his back before he can get his hands on any dynamite. Nice that Asami’s feeling better. Of course, Kyoko has that effect on most people.

“I think we’re done,” Kyoko declares, satisfied. “You’re taking care of the dress, Gokudera?”

Hayato stops snarling at Asami long enough to nod to Kyoko.

“Then I’m heading home, unless anything else—”

Someone knocks, interrupting her, and Takeshi releases Hayato to answer it. Kyoko goes out, Kusakabe comes in, Takeshi should just get a revolving door.

“Tetsu,” Asami says softly, abruptly subdued.

Kusakabe looks grim; Takeshi almost feels bad for Asami. She respects Kusakabe as much as she worships Hibari, and Kusakabe is obviously disappointed in her. Though whether he’s disappointed because she murdered someone or because she was messy about it, Takeshi doesn’t know.

“Asami-chan,” he says, slow and sad. “We should head home.”

“I’m sorry, Tetsu.” Asami’s voice is going shaky again.

Kusakabe nods, apology noted, if not exactly accepted. Takeshi studies the floor and Hayato coughs uncomfortably. This is kind of rough, and Takeshi really wishes he weren’t around for it.

“Don’t tell Papa,” Asami begs.

“I won’t,” Kusakabe replies, “because you’re going to.”

Takeshi looks up to see Asami’s shoulders hunch pitifully. That’s not his number one concern, though. Hibari is. Do they really need to tell Hibari? Because the world might end in fire if they do.

No, no. Kusakabe knows Hibari best, and he wouldn’t let him go on a vengeful killing spree. Would he?

Hayato has his eyes closed and is muttering the Hail Mary, which is doing nothing to add to Takeshi’s sense of security.

“I’m sorry for all the trouble our girl caused you,” Kusakabe says formally.

“It’s no problem,” Takeshi answers. Hayato cracks an eye open and nods agreement, generous when it counts. Kusakabe bows, and Asami silently follows him out, meeting no one’s eyes, distressingly and uncharacteristically meek.

“Yeah, no problem, kid, you’re welcome,” Hayato mutters to the closed door. “You tiny future serial killer.”

Takeshi’s not touching that one. “What are we telling Tsuna?”

“Everything, if he asks,” Hayato declares. “Nothing, if he doesn’t. And he really has to _ask_ , he has to use her name. Right?”

Takeshi nods soberly. They’ve both vowed to stop falling for Tsuna’s _Are you_ sure _there’s nothing wrong?_ trick. Not that they’ve had much luck so far. Tsuna will probably know all about this by tomorrow, and then he’ll make that crushed-by-the-world face. Takeshi’s not looking forward to it.

When he opens his door the next morning to find Hibari lurking outside, he reflects that he wasn’t looking forward to this, either. But at least it’s not a surprise.

“Asami,” Hibari manages to get out before choking on confused rage. Yikes. If parenthood can do this to Hibari, it would _kill_ Takeshi.

“Come in.” Takeshi steps back. Hibari walks in just far enough to let him close the door, then stands there uneasily, like something feral. Takeshi shakes his head and leans against the kitchen table. He wishes he’d thought to get rid of the bloodstained chair, because Hibari’s making eyes at it. “She’ll be fine.”

Hibari glares wordlessly.

“She got in over her head.” One way or another. Given what Asami was wearing, where they found the body, and the time of day she was there, Takeshi suspects she might have been using herself as bait. (Irie’s checking whether the corpse had a police record.) But that’s just speculation, they’ll never know for sure, and never in life does Takeshi plan to share that thought with Hibari. “But she handled it pretty well.” By Hibari standards. “She took care of everything herself; only needed help with the cleanup.”

“She went to _you_ ,” Hibari hisses, barely holding himself in check, rage pouring off him like it did when he was a kid.

“She was afraid you’d be upset.”

Hibari’s mouth drops open. Takeshi would love a picture of this, but not quite enough to defy death by taking one.

“Look…I don’t know how it worked with you, but I never told my dad about the really bad stuff. I didn’t want him to worry, you know? I mean, what if I gave him a heart attack? Parents take stuff way too seriously. So when you have a serious problem, you go to people who love you, but not the ones who love you more than life.” _And when you’re ashamed of yourself, the last thing you want is your dad finding out what you did_.

Hibari stares for, Takeshi’s guessing, a solid minute, then he leaves without a word. Come to think of it, that’s kind of a family habit.

Hopefully he feels better. It’s hard to tell with him.

* * *

Hayato is lurking outside the gates of a high school like a pervert, and he’s not entirely clear on why. He’s never the babysitter—he only gets stuck with Asami duty when he’s with Takeshi, who’s the second most favored babysitter after the Tenth. He always assumed Hibari had some unstated problem with him. So what’s special about today?

Well. For one thing, he and Asami’ll be outside the whole time they’re together. Maybe Hibari’s got a problem with secondhand smoke. Uptight prick.

Ah, here comes trouble—Asami and gang. God, it’s such a warped flashback. Asami’s got Chrome’s eyes and Chrome’s build with Hibari’s face and Hibari’s attitude, and the net effect is outright disturbing. Asami’s gang isn’t a discipline committee, though—just freelance thugs. She claims they refuse to be “oppressed by the institution” or some such horseshit. She confuses the hell out of Hibari, at least. That much is hilarious.

Her crew are mostly guys, generally big and mellow, but still intimidating—Kusakabe-esque, one might say—but she’s got a few girls, too. The girls are wiry and wild-eyed and look like they might haul off and do any fucking thing. But the creepiest thing about the lot of them, and the one big thing they have in common with Hibari’s guys, is that, however they feel about institutional oppression, they don’t _look_ like rebels. Perfect uniforms. No cigarettes. No dyed hair. Oh no, the trouble runs deeper than that. It’s in the way they move, in their eyes. Truly dangerous people are rarely flashy about it.

Hayato’s always been flashy. Whatever that means.

“Asami,” he calls out.

She turns away from a hulking fellow thug and her face lights up, not Hibari-bright, but surprisingly bright. Hayato firmly denies any and all proud, giddy feelings. She’s still a brat. “Uncle Hayato!” She splits off from her crew without a backward glance. Must be a fairly loose organization, because they hardly even notice her go—though a few of them shoot Hayato long, measuring looks. He reminds himself that Tenth doesn’t approve of violence against high school students, no matter how richly they may deserve it.

“Your dad sent me to get you,” Hayato says, wondering at the words as they come out of his mouth. “I guess you were supposed to meet him in the woods to beat up woodland creatures, or whatever it is you freaks do for fun. But the plan’s changed.”

“Uncle Hayato, we don’t beat up woodland creatures. We beat up humans because humans are worthless. Why didn’t Papa send me a text?”

Hayato starts walking because people are staring and it pisses him off. “There are some guys in town.”

“…Some guys? You mean you’re my _bodyguard?_ ”

“Shut up, it wasn’t my idea. I don’t care if you get abducted.”

“Aw, you love me.”

“You spend way too much time with the baseball idiot, and it shows.”

“Aw, you love Uncle Takeshi.”

“I will push you into traffic.”

“I’ll take you with me if you do.”

“How’s the body count, by the way? Staying steady at one?”

“Keep talking about it, and I’ll gouge _your_ eyes out. I have no idea how Tsuna puts up with you.”

Hayato snorts and resists the urge to light a cigarette. In contrast to most of Hibari’s weird hangups, Hayato almost respects the secondhand smoke thing. If that’s what it is. “Tenth puts up with _everything_. And don’t try to screw with my head. Where’d you learn that? Hibari doesn’t screw with people, he just kills them.”

“But Mom screws with people’s heads for a living,” Asami says, rolling her eyes. Her Chrome-given eyes. Why is it so hard to keep in mind who her mother is when it should be obvious every time you look at her? Is that some creepy fucking mist thing? “Anyway,” she babbles on, “it’s lucky Tsuna puts up with everything. I mean, I want him to put up with me, and I’m pretty hard to put up with.”

She doesn’t seem bothered by the fact, which irritates Hayato. Or at least it does until he picks up on the rest of that statement, at which point he finds other things to be irritated about. “What do you mean, you want him to put up with you?”

“When I work for the Vongola.” Like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.

Hayato shoves her over to the edge of the sidewalk, out of foot traffic, and stares her down. For once, he’d like her to take him seriously. If only for the novelty of it. “What you don’t appreciate,” he hisses, “is how hard Tenth works to keep you in the family but out of the business.”

She stares back, blank yet menacing. “Why bother? I’ll end up working for him sooner or later.”

“Why? You’ve got decent grades. You could get an honest job.”

“Uncle Takeshi says you had decent grades, too. Why didn’t _you_ get an honest job?”

The answer is, _This is all I’m good for_. It’s the same answer for both of them, and it’s pathetic. “Tenth won’t like it.”

“He never likes anything, but he puts up with everything. That’s why he’s already going gray.”

“And if you work for him, that’ll become something you have to worry about. You really want that?”

“I won’t be a guardian or anything, though. I’ll just be…around. Like Uncle Ken. So I won’t have to worry as much as you. I can handle it.”

Hayato gives up, turns away, and marches back into the flow of people. He should know better than to argue with a Hibari. Beating your head against a brick wall is both more productive and less painful. “Forget it.”

Asami scurries after him like a happy little wolverine. “So you’re on my side now, right, Uncle Hayato?”

“Dream on,” he says, lighting a cigarette and be damned to Asami’s lungs. “I’m pretending this conversation never happened. I heard nothing. I’ve never met you in my life.”

“You’re such a jerk.”

Hayato tries to remember if he was this annoying as a teenager. He has a faint, horrible suspicion that he might have been worse.

* * *

“…Tsuna?”

“No,” he replies, a little muffled. He’s sprawled on the couch in his office holding a pillow over his face like he’s thinking about smothering himself. He has a fit like this about once a year; Reborn used to call it _regression_. It means he’ll be impossible to talk to, which is a shame, because Asami really needs to talk to him. Technically, she doesn’t need to talk to him _today_ , but she did walk all the way over here. Turning around and leaving again would be stupid.

If Papa were here, he’d attack Tsuna, and Asami can see why. The problem is, she wants something from him, and if she attacks him, he won’t be in a very receptive mood. So.

“Tsuna, if you agree to let me work for you, I’ll leave you alone.”

“I knew you were going to say that,” comes the voice from under the pillow, “which is why I said _no_.”

It figures that he’d work that out; it was her graduation last week. Also, Tsuna reads minds. Cheater.

“If you don’t agree to let me work for you, I _won’t_ leave you alone.”

“And your friends can’t work for me either.”

“I can’t get a job without getting them jobs!”

“You aren’t getting a job, so there’s no problem.”

“Uncle Hayato taught me a cool trick with tiny bombs. Want to see?”

“One stick of dynamite, and I swear to God I will pack up and move to an undisclosed Caribbean island.”

“You’ve been saying that for as long as I can remember, but you’re still here. Anyway, it’s not like I need your permission. I bet Papa didn’t wait around for your permission.”

“Yes, let’s talk about your father. Death, thy name is Hibari Kyouya. You think he wants you working for me? Because I doubt it.”

Tsuna is honestly scared of Papa. Papa says Tsuna could wipe out all life on the planet if he wanted to. The whole relationship is insane. Anyway, as if Papa even cares. He just wants her to kick ass, he’s not particular about the arena. “He’ll get used to the idea.”

“Why don’t you work for him?”

“Um…for Papa? That. Really wouldn’t work out. I’m bad at taking orders.”

“And yet you wouldn’t mind taking orders from me.”

She can’t think of a polite way to explain that she plans to ignore Tsuna’s orders, whereas she wouldn’t _dare_ ignore Papa’s. Luckily, Tsuna keeps talking, so she doesn’t have to.

“Are you finally going through a rebellious phase? Does it really need to involve me? Why is it _always like this?_ ”

“Come on, Tsuna, don’t make this hard. If you won’t let me work for you, I’ll have to start my own gang and take over the Vongola myself. Think how much work that would be.”

Tsuna goes totally silent. That is never good.

Asami doesn’t like that she can’t see his face. She can’t tell if he’s mad or thinking or upset. He may even have fallen asleep to avoid the conversation; he’s been known to do that.

But he has to let her work for him. He has to; he’s going to. She’ll be nice about it as long as she can, but this is her life, it’s always been her life, and he’s not keeping her from it. She’ll do anything she has to.

“So you want to be my successor?” he asks, slow and thoughtful.

Anything but that. That sounds really ominous. “No. No, that’s not what I—”

He abruptly tosses the pillow away, sits up, and leans toward her with his hands clasped between his knees. She’s never seen him this intense, not even when she fights him, and it’s…weird. Extremely weird.

“If you want to be Vongola XI,” he says, “you need to start preparing right away. By the time I was your age, I was already the de facto leader of the family. You’re behind, Asami-chan.”

“Tsuna, I just wanted—”

“Don’t worry, Eleventh, I’ll train you. And—” Sudden silence, but Asami knows what he almost said. Reborn has been dead for five years, but Tsuna still hasn’t gotten used to the idea. It’s scary, because Asami knows she’ll be the exact same way when Papa dies. “…And so will Gokudera and Yamamoto and Basil,” Tsuna continues after a second, a little subdued. “And you know, I doubt Hibari-san will mind this. So you’ll have plenty of help.”

“But—”

“I’ve been worried about who to entrust with my family. Everyone the right age is so…I’d really prefer you. I’d be honored to have you as my successor, Asami-chan. And you can hire all of your friends, so there’s that problem solved.”

Asami doesn’t understand how it’s possible that she can clobber Tsuna in every strategy game known to man, and yet he can still totally play her in real life. “Wait a second, Tsuna, wouldn’t I have to be a sky type? Also, won’t the Vongola ring kill me? Besides, I’m not—people don’t—look, _you_ , people just do whatever you want because you use mind control. Life is not like that for me. I’m more like Papa.”

Vongola Tenth waves these perfectly reasonable objections away. “Sky types are rare. I don’t know any your age who could lead the family, so you’ll have no competition. And we’ll work around the blood problem. I never liked that rule, anyway. Surely the ring can be…re-engineered. Or something.” He says casually, as if vandalizing mind-bendingly powerful family heirlooms is no big deal.

“But…isn’t that rule the reason you’re the Tenth?”

“Exactly.”

“Tsuna, don’t be weird. And that still leaves the problem of people being mostly terrified of me. And of me mostly not liking people. You _love_ people.”

“Hm. People like you more than you think.”

Tsuna has no perspective on his own creepy mind control powers. “That’s not—”

“But if you find a replacement—and it’ll have to be someone I agree would be better at the job than you—then I’ll let you off the hook.”

Ah ha, now she sees what he’s pulling. Tsuna’s a jerk. It’s easy to forget because he has a totally sweet face, but sometimes, and especially when he thinks he’s doing it for your own good, he is a _jerk_. “I’m sorry, Tsuna, but I’m going to have to gouge your eyes out.”

He smiles. “At least I won’t have to do paperwork anymore.”

“Wrong. Uncle Hayato will just read the paperwork out to you.”

“See how well you understand? You’ll make a great boss.”

“Tsuna!”

“Hello, Hibari-san,” he says.

“Sawada Tsunayoshi,” says a voice from the door. “Asami.”

“…Papa.” Asami didn’t notice him come in. She let someone sneak up behind her, even if that someone was Papa. Oh, she’s going to get her ass kicked for that later.

Papa narrows his eyes. Asami cringes on the inside. “Your mother is home,” he says.

“Oh! Really?” Mom is seriously ceremony-phobic for some reason, and Asami figured they wouldn’t see her within a month of graduation. This is _awesome_.

“I said she was, didn’t I?”

On the long list of things Papa hates, having to repeat himself is up there pretty high. This is apparently Asami’s day to annoy him. So at this point, she might as well go for broke, right? Get the most for her ass-kicking. “Think she’ll play with me?”

“I don’t see why not,” Papa says stiffly, expression _really_ not happy.

Mom will only fight one of them a day. Sometimes she makes the second one wait two days, or even a week. So it’s a big deal to get first dibs.

It used to be that whoever spotted her first got to fight her, but that wasn’t fair at all, because Papa has a whole spy network and Asami had to be in school. So they made a deal to alternate. It happens to be Asami’s turn.

She’s a very bad daughter to rub it in like that.

...And she should probably stop now, because Tsuna is getting that fascinated/horrified look, and soon he’ll be out-and-out panicky. Poor Tsuna. For being the scariest man alive, he’s awfully delicate.

Asami stands up. “I’ll let you two talk. And I’ll talk to _you_ later, Tsuna.” She scowls at him. He doesn’t seem very impressed. “See you at home, Papa.” She leans up and kisses him on the cheek.

According to Uncle Dino, who has a twisted sense of humor, kissing your father on the cheek is a done thing. Also, Papa makes a hilarious face whenever she does it, like he’s torn between being pleased and beating her to death.

She’s always careful to run far away before he makes up his mind. If you’re going to mess with Papa, you’d better be quick on your feet.

* * *

Tsuna knows that laughing at Hibari is tantamount to suicide. In view of that, it’s not usually so hard to resist.

Hibari eventually manages to stop staring incredulously at the closed door, but he’s still distracted. “You’re tricking her into being the outside advisor?”

It’s not getting any easier not to laugh. “…Well, yes, if she finds a replacement for herself as the Eleventh. If not, I was actually serious about that.”

Hibari sneers dismissively. “She’ll find a replacement.”

“Then,” says Tsuna, “I’m sure she’ll be great with CEDEF.”

“You never try these tricks with me.”

“They never work on you.” _Because you’re a sociopath_ , Tsuna thinks fondly.

“Of course they don’t. Are you worrying about your legacy already, Sawada Tsunayoshi?”

“What do you mean, _already?_ I’m almost forty; in this business, that’s ancient. We’re getting too old for this, Hibari-san.”

“You sound like an herbivore.”

“I mean it, soon I won’t be able to handle you chucking me into walls.”

“When it comes to that, I’ll kill you.”

 _Just this far and no farther, Hibari-san?_ “Aren’t old animals allowed to act old?”

“Old animals die when they can’t hunt anymore.”

Tsuna should have seen that one coming, really. “Well, maybe it’s not that I’m getting old. Maybe I’m just sick of it.”

Hibari nods, apparently accepting that. Wonder of wonders.

“There is one problem with giving Asami-chan a lot of responsibility, though. Hibari-san, are you ever planning to do anything about the, um. Mukuro. Thing?”

“I taught Asami to break illusions. Chrome taught her to clear mist from her mind. She knows what she needs to know.”

“Yes, but maybe someone should tell her to apply that knowledge. I still don’t understand why you and Chrome _left_ that there.”

“Asami has to take care of it on her own.”

“ _Why?_ ”

“It’s between her and that man.”

“Hibari-san, that’s insane. She was a _baby_ when he did that. Honestly, I don’t even think he was serious. He had to know you and Chrome would both notice right away—he must’ve expected you to get rid of it.”

“He wouldn’t do anything so meaningless.”

Tsuna rubs his temples. Hibari’s intermittent faith in Mukuro is more headache-inducing than his most unreasonable rage fit. “You don’t care that he’s messed with her mind? I don’t believe that. Besides, if she _is_ going to lead CEDEF, I need her to be able to think about Mukuro!”

“It’s her responsibility,” Hibari insists. “She’ll take care of it.”

Tsuna sighs and sits back, giving up on that conversation yet again. And he’s still none the wiser. About any of it, really. What Mukuro was thinking. What Hibari’s thinking now. What Chrome is thinking ever, at any time. “You came to see me,” he says.

Hibari leans forward and launches into a lecture on box weapons, because the boxes are his lifelong obsession regardless of timeline. In this timeline, though, he has a desk drawer filled with toy box weapons made once upon a time by a similarly obsessed little kid. He refers to them as “defective,” but keeps them anyway. Tsuna wonders if he understands why.

Today, he’s describing the destructive capacity of ferret box weapons with as much animation as he ever shows. It’s nice to see him cheerful. All the same, Tsuna’s dreading the end of this lecture—Hibari’s definitely going to make him fight ferrets afterward.

Tsuna doesn’t care what anyone says. He is way too old for this.

* * *

It’s the middle of the night, and Hibari is breathing quietly beside her, just enough sound for Chrome to be sure he’s alive. Asami is in the next room; Chrome can’t hear her, which is a shame. She likes to watch over both of them, when she can.

She often does this when she stays with Hibari—her own midnight vigil. She sits in the dark, waits out the hours, and pretends to be a shadow. She’s good at that.

It’s always been a game between her and Hibari, or maybe a fight. Or maybe there’s no difference. He tries to find her, and she tries not to let him. And if he always wins these days, she doesn’t mind. After all, she was the one who taught him how.

When they were younger, she sometimes came to his home and stayed for days, silent and still. She stole food at night, used his bathroom when he was gone. She picked up every fallen strand of hair, every crumb, carefully wiped every drop of water from the sink and tub. She even wiped her fingerprints, more for symbolic purposes than anything else.

She’d often leave before he noticed her, but she’d put something on his pillow to let him know she’d been there. A thank you note. A feather. A red rose. It didn’t matter what it was; it meant, _I win_.

Hibari didn’t like that at all. As much as he hates Mukuro, as much as he despises having his senses played with, she suspects this was what really pushed him to overcome illusion techniques. He hates to lose.

He studied breaking illusions the same way he studies anything that interests him—obsessively—and by the time Asami was born, he could find Chrome instantly nine times out of ten.

After Asami was born, the rules of the game changed.

“Your mother is home,” Hibari said as Chrome slipped in the door wrapped in mist and misdirection. It was her first visit since she’d dropped a baby in his arms and run away.

Kusakabe’s head jerked up in surprise; he looked around and couldn’t find her. The baby didn’t look because she was too tiny to understand. Chrome didn’t know the baby, didn’t even know her name, didn’t want to be seen. But she understood Hibari’s point. She dropped the illusion.

She visited again a few months later. Asami had already started to walk, if you could call it walking. As Chrome watched, she crashed into one of Hibari’s men, fell, and started to cry. Hibari marched toward the man, tonfa held ready. It wasn’t reasonable. Besides, Chrome felt, babies shouldn’t watch men being beaten nearly to death.

Not inside the house, anyway.

“Weapons,” she said, and Hibari turned to her in surprise. “The baby,” she explained, eyeing Asami uncomfortably. She was already up again, staggering around as if nothing had happened. “No weapons in the house.”

Hibari stared at Chrome. She braced herself, because if he didn’t agree, he would attack.

But he did agree. He tucked his tonfa away and nodded. The man he’d almost beaten up heaved a sigh of relief, and Chrome smiled.

No using weapons, including illusions, inside the house (except for self-defense). No fighting in the house. No lies in the house.

This was how they raised their daughter, pushing at each other to make a safe place in between. As safe as any place between them could be.

Asami spent most of her time with Hibari, so of course she grew up strong. That was the way it had to be—Chrome needed her to be strong. When Asami was small, she was so delicate that Chrome didn’t dare touch her. She didn’t trust herself with delicate things. It worked out well, because Hibari wouldn’t let anyone touch Asami. Only he and sometimes Kusakabe were allowed.

By the time Asami was five, she was sturdy enough that Hibari was willing to leave her with a select group of people (his parents, Kusakabe, Chrome, the boss, Reborn), and Chrome felt safe reaching out to her. Asami sometimes fell asleep with her head in Chrome’s lap, and it was…fine. It was fine. (And Chrome whispered into her hair, _I believed in you until you were real_.)

Asami is perfect and strange; she’s a puzzle. She’s like both of them, she’s not like either one. Sometimes Chrome can see where she picked up the pieces of herself—habits, quirks, turns of phrase—but more often it’s a mystery.

Chrome doesn’t regret her choice. Asami is everything Chrome hoped a daughter might be. It’s just that Chrome isn’t what she hoped a mother would be.

The boss is always asking why she won’t clear Mukuro’s illusion from Asami’s mind. She’s not sure what to tell him. It’s like a story about fairies coming to a christening bringing gifts and curses, and the question, really, is whether Mukuro is a good fairy or a bad one. Chrome may ask him, someday. If only to see the look on his face.

It’s also more complicated than that. Mukuro is the chaos to Hibari’s order, but by some miracle, Chrome is allowed to wander freely between them. She’s even allowed to stop and visit people in the middle—Kyoko, Haru, the boss.

Mukuro is one end of Chrome’s life and Asami and Hibari are the other. She doesn’t want them to meet; that would ruin everything. And Asami, seemingly by her nature, draws things together. It’s terrifying.

The short answer to Tsuna’s question is that Chrome is horribly selfish. And she’s not the only one.

She turns to study Hibari’s face in the dim light. Harsh and distant even in sleep, but still beautiful. He has his own reasons for letting Mukuro stay invisible to Asami. Chrome has a pretty good idea what those reasons are, and they’re no more noble than hers. They’re both selfish, she and Hibari.

They try to make up for it, though, in their own ways. Hibari is always there, while Chrome almost never is. It’s the best they could do, and it may have been enough. Asami is grown up and apparently happy; their family seems to work. This life seems to work. Chrome keeps waiting for it to stop feeling too good to be true, but it never does. Which is why she has to leave so often.

“You fought for this,” the boss says. “You bled for this, Chrome. Take whatever you can.”

He’s sweet, but sometimes he doesn’t understand the problem. It’s not that she doesn’t like feeling welcome—it’s not even that she doesn’t think she deserves it. It’s that she can’t _believe_ in it, and illusionists who can’t believe in reality die in short order. Given enough time and exposure, she knows she’d eventually get used to it, but that’s time she can’t spare.

The boss will work out what she’s up to sooner or later. After all, he’s got two different examples of it: Mukuro does the same thing with a different emphasis. He puts a lot of effort into making himself mysterious and hateful because he believes in hatred, while Chrome is always leaving because she believes in being unwanted.

To have faith in being known, loved, wanted…they’d have to become different people. It’s easier to stay this way. For now.

Kusakabe’s wind chimes sound through the room. Chrome tilts her head and lets her eyes fall half-closed, listening to the chimes and Hibari’s breathing, wishing she could check on Asami, but not daring. She last tried that when Asami was fifteen, and got a knife thrown at her for her trouble (she managed to dodge it), followed by half an hour of tearful apologies. _Mom, I’m so, so, sorry. I broke your rule!_ Your _rule! I didn’t—I didn’t know it was_ you _, I_ —

Chrome couldn’t get a word in. The noise eventually woke Hibari, who had a tantrum over being woken up, which caused Asami to fly into an indignant rage, and it all ended with the two of them storming off to the practice room to fight until morning. (Or so Chrome assumes; she went back to sleep. But when she woke up, they were still fighting.) They both spent the next day sleep-deprived and sulking, refusing to look at each other.

Chrome at no point let herself laugh at them. It was hard work. She doesn’t want to have to try again; she’s not sure she could manage a second time.

Hibari’s breathing changes. He’s waking up, though Chrome hasn’t made a sound. Maybe she’s been watching him too long. He does seem to be able to sense it, which is strange even by her standards.

Hibari opens his eyes, and Chrome disappears. He reaches up and wraps a hand around her throat anyway, fingers tightening just enough to be uncomfortable. _I see you_.

She watches him watching her, patiently waiting for him to properly wake up and remember who she is and why she’s there. It’s funny how many people she knows who reflexively attack on waking. It’s even funnier that the boss isn’t one of them.

“Sleep,” Hibari orders after a long moment, releasing her and turning away. He makes a good point. She’ll regret not sleeping in the morning.

She resettles herself, stares at the darkness, and ignores him. This is more important.


End file.
